


Hope is the thing with feathers

by PoeticallyIrritating



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, tw: self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-15
Updated: 2014-04-15
Packaged: 2018-01-19 10:57:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1466926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoeticallyIrritating/pseuds/PoeticallyIrritating
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helena, and wings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hope is the thing with feathers

She knows they’re not real wings.

Sometimes. She knows this sometimes, when she has been alone for a while and her heart goes quiet and cold. Wings are for flying and Helena cannot fly. (Once when she was small and dark-haired and exultant she tried, throwing herself out a window, and at the bottom she _cracked_ with a loud sharp sound. Helena _cannot_ fly.)

But sometimes at night big red wings bloom from the sliced skin on her back and shoulders and she lets them carry her somewhere safe and sinless and pure and when she lands they wrap around her like a blanket and everything is soft and warm. They’re gone when she wakes and she feels it like an ache, not just in her scabbing flesh but in the air all around where they should be, feathertips brushing the ground and the walls.

Once she is holding the razor against her skin but she already hurts too much, her insides and her outsides and all over, and she rasps at Tomas, “They’re not _real_.”

 _Symbolic_ , Tomas says. He talks for a long time and she tries very hard to understand about things that represent other things— _represent_ , she murmurs to herself over and over, the English syllables still thick and heavy on her tongue after all this time. She cannot make herself understand. The effort turns to pounding fists and a rough angry voice that only calms with Tomas at her side, stroking her hair and making soft, soothing sounds. She does not have to understand, he says. The knowing of it is enough.

He picks up the razor from where it was flung to the ground. Helena takes it from him delicately, mindful not to cut her fingers— _careful it’s sharp careful it’s sharp careful it’s sharp_ —and brings it to a place over her right shoulder blade covered in smooth unbroken skin. _(careful! it’s sharp!)_ Maybe if she makes them better they will start to feel real again.

 -

She follows the French one from a café to a pond, and as she hunches in the bushes— _watch just watch now is not the time to strike_ —she tracks the movements of the ducks from the corner of her eye. A child, shrieking, startles them into the air, but they barely rise at all before plummeting back to the surface of the water.

Something frantic and desperate is clawing at Helena’s chest. _Can’t breathe can’t see can’t—breathe—_ she chokes at air that is thick and hot— _do not move do not move do not reveal your position_. She waits. Waits for the abomination to finish her breakfast (Helena’s insides are beyond growling; her appetite is meek and whimpering and beaten and she does not make a sound) and then when the creature is gone she runs at the pond, yelling and flapping her arms. The ducks rise in a frantic honking cloud, but they do not fly away. And now Helena can see the clipped feathers of their wings. She crumples with a desperate, keening whine and then her throat closes up and she cannot make sound anymore.

 -

When she sees Sarah her stomach does something that feels like flying. She doesn’t know it’s Sarah, not then, doesn’t know her name, but her heart goes thump- _thump_ , thump- _thump_ and she doesn’t need her name because this woman is a pounding in her chest and a feeling deep in the core of her that is bright and warm and feathered. She doesn’t need her name until she’s offered it and then when she has it, it is everything, it is the echo behind her existence, it is _SarahSarahSarah_ repeated in a feverish daze all through the night. And when she wakes it is to the tune of Sarah’s name but she dare not speak it to Tomas, she _can’t._ Not the way she says it at night. Instead she says it dispassionately with her eyes blank and staring and it is not the same name as the name _SarahManning_ that is burning hot inside her.

She has never kept a secret before it is a _sin_ it is _wrong_ and God will be so _angry so angry so angry pray pray pray that you will be absolved child pray for forgiveness_

She prays very hard but God cannot forgive her if she does not stop sinning and she cannot stop. And _Sarah, Sarah, Sarah_ is threaded through her prayers. “Thou shalt have no gods before me,” Helena murmurs, but Sarah is no god, even if her name must be holy somehow because before this only God has made Helena feel like this, like she is bursting with light.

She carves the blade deeper in her skin with “Sarah” on her lips and perhaps the power of this name will draw real wings from her at last.


End file.
